I much prefer the idea of replacing one piece of hardware than all the bulbs in my house.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Philips Announces New Hue Bulbs, Hue Bridge 2.0 With HomeKit Compatibility
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The main advantage of the bridge for any home automation kit is the possibility of control while you're not in your house. If you can only control things via an ad-hoc WiFi connection, then you pretty much have to be in the house to do so.
Yup. The bridge is nice for this. I was abroad and a family member texted me if I could turn the lights on. I turned all the lights on with a press of the button and received a text back telling me how weird it was to have all the lights in the house turn on without them doing anything. Lol.
I love that.
I use it on my GE lights. it lets you be able to pick them up after you reset them when they are acting up. Now I buy the 19.99 hue bulbs to replace them. though I usually have to enter the serial number to get them going so a bit more work.
LOL! This is exactly what I wanted to do. Combine that with a HomeKit speaker (do they exist?) to get the sound and I'm all in! My neighbors will hate me!
Via a mesh network, which is how some of Phillips' competitors handle this (Lifx, for example). Still, there is at least one giant advantage to Phillips' approach, which is that it reduces the cost of the bulbs. For those of us who have quite a few, that's a good thing. For those who want just a few colorful side lamps, something else might be preferable.
I'll be buying this as soon as it is available. Also looking forward to the lightstrip plus, as I'll be able to combine these to create a cool bar lighting.
You don't have to replace them all. Not sure why anyone would. I just have a few smart bulbs and the rest are regular CREE LED bulbs for less than 10 bucks a pop at Home Depot.
To get the bridge owner discount you have to purchase through the Philips website. It goes on sale November first.
Fair enough. The price of the iPhone not included I could I guess setup for less than $1000 but here, I could easily use 40 bulbs just in bedrooms and bathrooms. Common areas would only add to that number. When I think of this, I think of whole house in the cost. I could do two lamps and a controller and have fun with it. I will look into this more and get a better handle on overall/final cost and maybe its a misconception on my part and cost is actually lower than I feel like it is.
LIFX uses RGB and in the reviews I've read they DO score lower than Hue for CRI. But Hue colours are 'washed out'. So it's a trade off. I have 2 LIFX bulbs though and I love them. I went with LIFX for the lumens. The 600 lumens of the Hue is a total joke. Glad to see they're up to at least 800 now. That's within the realm of consideration. But I'll probably stick with LIFX.
That is correct. You save $20 which is a good deal.
However if you want more light bulbs there is a better deal. Buy the starter kit for $199. You will get three of the brand-new lightbulbs and the hub. The lightbulbs are normally $60 apiece for a total of $180. Thus you were getting the new hub for only $20. Which is a savings of $40.
No, but they also do not use RGB specifically for this reason. The color of the LEDs were picked so that they could be used to create a wide range of whites. I have 5 and the whites can go from very, very warm to artic cold and pretty much every color temp in between. The downside is that, because of this, they don't do certain colors well (green in particular) since the green LEDs are more lime-green than a standard "green" green.
Yes I do since they advertized that way
Edit:
People need to stop acting like you are raping their mother when you say something even remotely negative about a product / company, people are entitled to their opinion and it is not like I was bashing Philips, as said earlier I like the company and their product.....
But where did they advertise this? I recall one statement which said that existing bulbs would be compatible, but nothing about the bridge.
They offer a couple of sizes but most are geared toward the large, down-facing can lights. You CAN use other bulbs with the system however. Any Zigbee enabled bulb should work. I have five Hue bulbs and about 10 GE Wink bulbs, all controlled via the Hue hub and app. They don't do color, obviously, but they are pretty inexpensive and work fine with the Hue bridge. Hue also has a less expensive white-only bulb that can be used with the bridge and purchased separately, and i though they were releasing a bulb close to the $15 range that the Wink bulbs were that were a fixed white color (Lux I think can actually change color temp) and can only be turned on/off and dimmed like the Wink bulbs.
All that said, if you want to do an entire house and you don't need/want the color options that Hue offers, your best bet is to do the switches and not the bulbs. ZWave switches from GE or Lutron combined with a decent ZWave controller would be way cheaper.
I have found the color to be great especially since in can customize it to my liking even compared to incandescent and other fluorescents .. but that's just me
you can also mix and match these with the GE link bulbs they also work with the Hue bridge aka zigbee protocol ususlly only cost 14 bucks each but I do prefer the hue bulbs
Lux (or White as they're called now) can't change color temperature - only dim. Looks like the OSRAM Lightify can change color temp but they're $30.
Cool. Thanks for the info. Switches would work for me versus bulbs for most rooms and the less expensive bulbs would work too since alternate colors would not be needed for anything other than a fun effect. Appreciate the info shared.
Yeah, earlier today (UK) this was linking to the new product, now it looks like the pages have been replaced with the existing one. Maybe they're waiting till 6th?
